


tripartite

by triptychtrilogy



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cancer, Character Death, Ego's A+ Parenting, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Poor Peter, Powerful Peter Quill, he's trying his best, in a very glowy way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23564314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triptychtrilogy/pseuds/triptychtrilogy
Summary: He is 8 when a strange blue man with sharp teeth and a spaceship (an actual, real life spaceship!	) comes to take him to the stars.He is 13 when he discovers the bodies of his siblings, piled so high they form the pillars for the ground he has been playing on for the past five years.He is 15 when his father takes him down to see them, smiling with teeth too white and a grip too hard on his shoulder and saying “See Pete, this is what happens when youdon't try hard enough”.He is 15 when he runs.Yondu delivers his cargo
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	tripartite

Peter’s mom says that he’s special, but all mom’s do that. Peter heard Zack’s mom call him the ‘Best Little Boy on the Entire Planet’ the other day, and Zack’s a douche, so Peter took that sort of praise with a grain of salt, and learned like the rest of his family to brush off his mom’s comments about his dad being an ‘angel, sent from above, made of light and absolutely glorious’. But Peter was still a kid, still an outcast in the little Podunk town where divorce was a scandal you couldn’t live down and people acted like a bastard child was proof of the devil’s corruption on earth, and he still wanted to believe that his dad was someone special, that he was someone, something better than the scrappy, skinny little kid of _Meredith down the road you know the one, who got knocked up behind the Ferris Wheel I heard when the circus came to town and kept it, oh the little dear, who’s gonna look after him when she’s-_

(Sometimes, even now, Peter thinks about the stuffy little town he came from and its desperation to cling to its stupid petty idea of morality and wonders if the real reason his mom got dirty looks whenever they went to the mall wasn’t that she had a child out of wedlock, but that she had the balls to stay. Sometimes Peter wishes he could be that brave). Now, Peter’s in a spaceship ( _an actual real life spaceship and omgthisissocoolwaituntilItell-_ ) and going to see his dad who is an actual alien and he could really enjoy it if it weren’t for the blue guy in front of him trying to get him to change his mind.

“Look, kid, your daddy ain’t the kind of guy I wanna be dealing with, and I eat children like you for breakfast.” The guy, _Yondu,_ says, and Peter would laugh except the other crewmembers have been looking at them like they can already see the apple in his mouth and Peter thinks that even if Yondu doesn’t actually mean it his crew might. Peter makes a promise in his head right that moment that he is going to be the best passenger this crew has ever seen.

“Now he’s paying me a pretty penny to fetch you but I could use another member that’s small enough to climb through vents and you have skinny arms,” Yondu says, clasping his around around Peter’s wrist and lifting it for inspection, almost lifting his entire _him_ with it. “that would be just perfect for stealing with me and my crew, so you’ve got a place here on this ship permanently if you want it.” Yondu looks at him expectantly but Peter is still reeling from the fact that his dad is alive, an _alien_ and cares enough about him to get Peter an expensive escort across the stars and Peter, who is used to second-hand shoes and now only has the clothes on his back, his backpack and his Walkman to his name, can’t believe someone is actually trying to take that away from him now, when he has no one else in the world- the universe- who cares about him.

It still only takes him a moment.

“No. Thank you.” He says stiffly, and then, because these men are intimidating with their alien-leather jackets and hungry looks and he quite likes not being eaten, adds. “And if you don’t I’ll- I’ll scream. Or something.” Okay, so that wasn’t the most intimidating of insults, but Peter’s pretty sure these guys have never been around a child, let alone one having a temper tantrum and Peter was put in charge of his cousins once at thanksgiving and got a headache because of the unholy screeches present throughout the entire meal. Yondu laughs, and looks delighted at the threat, though something flashes in his eyes that both scares Peter and just annoys him, because he knows he’s only a kid and they picked him up out of the sky like he was nothing but that doesn’t mean he _is_. His dad is an alien and he is going to meet him, and this blue douche who’s self-importance is reminding him more and more of Zack and all the other a-holes he has dealt with his entire life is trying to stop him and he is getting angry and has been angry for so long, ever since that diagnosis because his mom was all he had and she’s been taken away from him and the injustice of it stings. He feels like his entire world has been ripped apart and the harsh beeping of his mother flatlining is still ringing in his ears and he doesn’t think it’s ever going to go away, it’s just going to keep getting louder and louder until he breaks and so it really doesn’t take much and when Yondu finally says-

“Go on then, I dare ya.” Peter _does_. He breaks and breaks and feels like he’s going to keep breaking forever and the sound of his screams set off something red and fast on Yondu’s belt off and it flits around the room hitting some power switch that plunges them all into darkness and Peter hears the squelching sound of it going through someone’s leg but he doesn’t care because he’s _glowing_. The lights are off but Peter is bright enough in the darkness that he can see the growing fear on Yondu’s face as Peter throws his crew to the sides, screaming for a mom who told him he was special and will never tell him again and a home he will never go back to. He screams for his dad in the blackness of space because he’s read stories and knows that dads are supposed to protect their kids and right now he’s scared because he never thought that being special meant being dangerous and all he wants right now is to stop this- _please somebody stop him_ \- and then, miraculously, like the God that has been ignoring his pleas for months has finally decided to take pity on him, he does. Peter falls to the ground and sleeps as the crew of Ravagers tries to get further away from him in the confines of the ship, and as they all get closer and closer to a planet known as Ego.

Well, so much for that promise.

**Author's Note:**

> Freud's 'Ego' was presented as one aspect of a tripartite structure of the personality containing the ego, the superego, and the id.


End file.
